ABSTRACT
Our journey begins with two legal cases involving spatial transgression. The first case, Hakim v. Minister of Interior 1 takes us some fifty years back to the early years of Israeli statehood. In 1944, Subhi Farah Khuri, a Palestinian citizen, left: Mandate Palestine lawfully to pursue his studies at the American University in Beirut. Throughout the time he studied in Lebanon, Khuri regularly came back to Palestine to visit his family. In 1948, following Israels declaration of independence and the ensuing war between Israel and the Arab countries, the territory of Mandate Palestine was occupied by the Israeli armed forces. When in 1950 Khuri attempted to return to his village, which was by then under Israeli sovereignty, he was caught by a military patrol and transferred back to Lebanon which, upon Israels independence, had become an enemy state. His mother Naima, an Israeli citizen by virtue of residency in Mandate Palestine, asked the state authorities to grant her son Israeli citizenship, but her request was denied. Hakim challenged the decision in court, arguing that her son, being a Palestinian citizen who lawfully lived outside the country temporarily, should not be punished for the change of sovereignty and asked the Supreme Court to instruct the State of Israel to register her son as an Israeli citizen. The Court refused to grant the requested relief, asserting that no remedy would be provided to a person who chose willfully to reside in an enemy state.
